Biggest Mergers And Acquisitions of 2021
In the post-pandemic world, one thing that stayed constant was the steady flow of mergers and acquisitions in the tech world. Here is our list of the top 20 M&As. November Intuit Acquires Mailchimp Intuit, best known for its financial service offerings, acquired the email marketing company Mailchimp. As part of the agreement, Mailchimp will […]
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In the post-pandemic world, one thing that stayed constant was the steady flow of mergers and acquisitions in the tech world. Here is our list of the top 20 M&As.
November
Intuit Acquires Mailchimp
Intuit, best known for its financial service offerings, acquired the email marketing company Mailchimp. As part of the agreement, Mailchimp will work with QuickBooks, Intuit’s accounting software, to help small and medium-sized businesses acquire and retain customers. The acquisition advances its strategy to become an AI-driven expert platform.
October
Zendesk Acquires Momentive
Zendesk has acquired Momentive, including its iconic SurveyMonkey platform. This acquisition will build more meaningful relationships by allowing the two companies to cross-sell and co-develop existing and future products and create a new customer intelligence company.
Stripe Acquires Recko
Stripe has acquired accountancy platform Recko. Its automated payments reconciliation software replaces manual processes of correctly matching transactions and considers currency conversions, refunds and chargebacks. Recko’s solution was added to Stripe’s existing suite of financial tools.
Adobe Acquires Frame.io
Adobe announced the acquisition of Frame.io, a video review and collaboration platform. The Frame.io platform helps creative professionals streamline the video creation process by centralising dailies, scripts, storyboards, works-in-progress, and more, while also allowing for frame-accurate feedback and comments, annotations, and real-time feedback approvals. The combination of Adobe’s creative software and Frame.io’s review and approval functions deliver a collaboration platform that powers the video editing process.
Qualtrics Acquires Clarabridge
Qualtrics announced the acquisition of Clarabridge. With Clarabridge, Qualtrics is adding conversational analytics to its platform, the gold standard for engaging with customers and employees. Clarabridge’s AI-powered platform allows companies to discover and analyse customer feedback from indirect sources such as support conversations, chat, social media posts and review sites.
Instacart Acquires Caper AI
Instacart announced the acquisition of Caper AI, a leading AI-powered shopping cart and checkout technology platform. This acquisition expands Instacart’s comprehensive retailer enablement platform, which currently spans the Instacart marketplace. These robust enterprise services power the eCommerce solutions for many top grocers, fulfilment technology to support delivery and pickup capabilities, last-mile delivery, and much more. With this acquisition, Instacart aims to help retailers unify customers’ in-store and online shopping experiences.
September
Apollo Global Management Acquires Yahoo
Apollo Global Management completed its acquisition of Yahoo, formerly known as Verizon Media Group, from Verizon. The acquisition heralds an exciting time of renewed opportunity for the company as a standalone entity. The coming months and years will bring fresh growth and innovation for Yahoo as a business and a brand.
Panasonic Acquires Blue Yonder
Panasonic Corporation acquired Blue Yonder, the leading end-to-end digital fulfilment platform provider. The acquisition accelerates Panasonic’s and Blue Yonder’s shared vision for an Autonomous Supply Chain. By unifying Panasonic’s sensing technologies and edge devices with Blue Yonder’s AI/ML-powered planning, execution and commerce solutions, companies can create smarter and more connected e-commerce strategies, retail stores, warehouses, transportation, and workplaces.
Packable Merges With Highland Transcend
Packable, the holding company for the technology-led eCommerce marketplace, merged with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Highland Transcend Partners. This transaction will help the company enter its next growth phase following its recent partnership with the lead investor. Packable leads a multi-marketplace e-commerce enablement platform providing category-leading brands with the connections, data insights, and services needed to enable accelerated online marketplace sales.
Vista Acquires Blue Prism
Vista has acquired an RPA vendor, Blue Prism, to combine with Tibco. Blue Prism offers a no-code automation platform that enables organisations to automate specific processes, with capabilities including the Intelligent Automation Platform, Blue Prism Cloud and Automation Lifecycle Management. This acquisition expands the range of products both the companies offer together.
August
Zendesk Acquires Cleverly
Zendesk grows its customer service capabilities with the acquisition of AI startup Cleverly. Cleverly’s product platform offers a series of AI-powered capabilities — its agent assist capability helps customer service agents provide the correct answers to inquiries. The company’s technology already integrates with Zendesk, as well as with Salesforce.
Cisco Acquires Epsagon
Cisco announced its acquisition of Israel-based applications-monitoring startup Epsagon. Epsagon is built from the ground up to monitor modern applications built with containers and Kubernetes, giving users tracing and metrics. Cisco’s approach to full-stack observability gives the customers the ability to move beyond just monitoring to a paradigm that delivers shared context across teams and enables customers to deliver digital experiences, optimise for cost, security and performance and maximise digital business revenue.
Square Acquires Afterpay
Square has acquired Afterpay. The acquisition enables the companies to deliver better financial products and services. Square and Afterpay can better connect the Cash App and Seller ecosystems to provide products and services for merchants and consumers, putting the power back in their hands.
Microsoft Acquires Peer5
Microsoft bolstered live video streaming in Teams by acquiring electronic content-delivery network (eCDN) vendor Peer5. Peer5 runs in browsers to optimise bandwidth usage for line-of-business applications and has mesh networks that can automatically scale as the number of viewers increases. Peer5’s technology doesn’t require additional installation on user endpoints or any changes to physical network infrastructure.
Salesforce Acquires Servicetrace
Salesforce has inked a deal to acquire Servicetrace, a leading provider of RPA. Salesforce intends to make Servicetrace part of Mulesoft. The integration, API management, and automation are required to scale and increase work speed — from streamlining sales operations to speeding up customer case resolution.
July
Zoom Acquires Five9
Zoom made its biggest acquisition this year, purchasing the contact centre technology provider Five9. Five9 specialises in flexible cloud-based contact centre technology instead of traditional on-premise systems for contact centre staff. This acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers.
HP Acquires Teradici
HP acquired a high-performance remote computing software firm Teradici. The acquisition will enhance the company’s capabilities in the personal systems category by delivering new compute models and services tailored for hybrid work. Teradici’s cutting-edge technology has long been at the forefront of secure, high-performance virtual computing. Their talent, industry-leading IP and robust integrations with all major public cloud providers will expand the addressable market and meet growing customer needs for more mobile, flexible and secure computing solutions.
June
Cision Acquires Brandwatch
Cision acquired digital consumer intelligence company Brandwatch. The deal pairs Cision’s long-time leadership in media intelligence with Brandwatch’s AI and ML technology and deep social listening. The companies will bring innovation, comprehensive data and real-time insights to the customers.
May
Jamf Acquires Wandera
Jamf, enterprise Apple device management specialist, acquired zero trust cloud security company Wandera. Jamf will look to bring Wandera’s mobile security capabilities into its own Apple device management suite. The combination of Wandera and Jamf provides the customers with a single-source platform that handles deployment, application lifecycle management, policies, filtering, and security capabilities across all Apple devices while delivering zero-trust network access for all mobile workers.
March
ServiceNow Acquires Intellibot
ServiceNow acquired RPA firm Intellibot. ServiceNow intends to build Intellibot’s capabilities into its Now Platform to allow customers to automate more business processes. This acquisition will extend ServiceNow’s ability to help customers connect systems so they can easily automate workflows and drive productivity. This acquisition continues a trend of IT companies offering RPA capabilities, either by building or buying them.
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